Gremlins Changing Desktop Display

[artbuc]

I have a HP a1600n desktop with Win 7 and ASUS monitor. I have my desktop set-up with my favorite picture in the center with colored borders on each side. My desktop icons are located in the colored borders. About once per week, when I wake-up my PC, the colored borders are gone. (I typically wake-up my PC several times per day and desktop looks fine.) The picture is stretched horizontally to fill the space where the borders where. The icons are still there. I have to restart to get my display back. Can anyone give me some ideas about what causes this and what settings I need to change to prevent it from happening? Thanks.

[patio]

How did you set these borders ? ?
If you set the full background to that color then add the pic it should retain those settings...
Is this how you set it up ?

[artbuc]

Patio, I will have to go back and try to reconstruct what I did. I tinkered with both the monitor setting buttons and the Win 7 control panel. Seems like something is making the desktop go back to a default setting. I'll get back to you.

[patio]

10 - 4...

[artbuc]

Here we go:

Control Panel>Appearance & Personalization>Personalization>Desktop Background>Picture Position>Center

I have several different sizes of my desktop photo in My Pictures. If I choose the largest photo in the Center position, the borders will disappear. So, I think one of two things may be happening: (1) the gremlin is switching from the preferred sized photo to the largest size or (2) the gremlin is changing my Picture Position from Center to Fill.

[patio]

The question is...not whats happening to it...the question should be how do you want it to be ? ?

[Geek-9pm]

General reference:
Change your desktop background
and ...
Create a desktop background slide show
For a slide show with boarders, , the pictures all be just under the size of the display.

[artbuc]

The question is...not whats happening to it...the question should be how do you want it to be ? ?

I want it to stay where I put it. IOW, I do not want it to mysteriously change settings whenever it wants to. I select the picture and position it to show the borders, then I click the "save settings" button. Seems to me the desktop should not change until/unless I go back into the Control Panel and intentionally change it. What is changing my desktop display and why does it go back to my desired display after I restart?

[artbuc]

General reference:
Change your desktop background
and ...
Create a desktop background slide show
For a slide show with boarders, , the pictures all be just under the size of the display.

Thanks Geek. Yes, I know how to do what these links show. Problem is (see my response to Patio) every once in a while the display "loses" it's borders.

[patio]

Does anyone else use this PC ? ?
Is there more than 1 User account on it ? ?

Because i know of no way that Windows will randomly just change a background appearance setting...

[artbuc]

Does anyone else use this PC ? ?
Is there more than 1 User account on it ? ?

Because i know of no way that Windows will randomly just change a background appearance setting...

Nope. Just me. I have to say something just doesn't seem right since installing 7. Sometimes I get programs running in the background which bring IE and Live Mail to a grinding halt. I got rid of most of the problem when I logged out of the Live Mail account and stopped the Internet feeds. Then I accidentally downloaded all of the associated apps with Windows Essentials. I thought I was installing updates to Windows Security Essentials. I uninstalled Windows Essentials and then downloaded just Live Mail. Everything seems to be working much better now. Maybe the desktop problem will resolve itself too.

[Geek-9pm]

Very strange.
Just for nothing, try and see if you can duplicate the behavior on another user account.

[artbuc]

Update: I think I have identified the source of my problem. It is associated somehow with the NIVIDA install. I disabled one of the drivers and the desktop changed and when I enabled it, the desktop changed again but not back to original. It changed to the "mystery" setting. I then restarted PC and desktop was back to where I want it. I am not using the NVIDIA control panel to set-up my desktop and I do not use the other features such as 3D. I assume I need the basic driver but I wonder if uninstalling the NIVIDA frills will solve my problem?

[patio]

I would leave it...you can turn off 3D...just make sure all your personalisation is done thru Control Panel...not the nVidia app.

[artbuc]

The plot thickens. I uninstalled all NVIDIA except basic driver (did that before I saw Patio's post). I went into Device Manager and right clicked on NVIDIA driver and clicked on Properties. I clicked on the first two tabs just to read the content - did not change anything. When I clicked on the 3rd tab entitled  "Details" the desktop changed the way it has been changing mysteriously. I restarted PC and desktop settings restored to desired state. Something definitely seems funky in the NVIDIA driver or my video/graphics card. What do you folks think?

[artbuc]

SMOKING GUN!

I can consistently reproduce/simulate the problem with my desktop display. Device Manager>Display Adaptors>NVIDIA GeForce 6150LE>Details. As soon as I hit the Detail button, the desktop changes. Text/Icon size increases and I lose borders. Have to restart to restore display. Any ideas?

[artbuc]

Looks like I have having a conversation with myself, lol! I downloaded the recommended driver from nvidia. Used a custom install and did graphics driver only. The new driver does the same thing when I click the Details tab under Properties. The custom install gave an option for "clean install". Should I try this as the name implies it might remove something which is corrupt?

At this point is it safe to assume that I have a problem with my video card?

[patio]

No...it's most likely just the software...
Go ahead and re-do it choosing the "clean install" method.

[artbuc]

No...it's most likely just the software...
Go ahead and re-do it choosing the "clean install" method.

No luck. I uninstalled drivers and disabled MS Essentials as recommended by nvidia and did a clean install of current driver. Still have the same problem with desktop display changing when I click on Details tab of nvidia driver Properties.

I have been assuming that the display changing when the Details tab is clicked is caused by the same thing that is causing desktop display to change when the PC is not being used. Maybe that is a bad assumption. At this point I am going to live with it until/unless it gets worse. It is not that big of a deal to restart 2 or 3 times per week...I just do not like the idea of something not being right. Thanks for your help. Holler if anything else comes to mind about the cause of this.

[patio]

Dont clik the Details tab in nVidia anymore...
Problem solved.
It's only a preview anyways.

[artbuc]

Dont clik the Details tab in nVidia anymore...
Problem solved.
It's only a preview anyways.

Right, but that is not the problem that was bugging me. It is only something I discovered when I was trying to solve the real problem. My guess is sometime within the next 24-36 hours I will wake up my PC and the desktop will be messed up.

[patio]

Someone else may have an idea Art...
I have 2 PC's here and 1 at my Office all with nVidia cards and i haven't been able to duplicate your results...

[artbuc]

Someone else may have an idea Art...
I have 2 PC's here and 1 at my Office all with nVidia cards and i haven't been able to duplicate your results...

Thanks Patio. I was thinking about upgrading my video card anyway so I can get a HDMI input to my new monitor. Assuming there is at least a possibility my video card is causing the problem, it may be a good time to upgrade. My PC is over 7 years old but I just installed Win 7 OEM and I would like to get at least another year or two out of it. What is the best way to determine the right video card? Should I start a new thread in the hardware sub-forum?

[patio]

That would be a good start...yes.
Post the Model # of the PC...or if homebuilt post at least the MBoard manuf. name and Model #

Best of Luck.

[artbuc]

I just came across this post on another forum. Would this method help me determine what errors are causing spontaneous changes in my desktop display settings? This person had a problem with slow/crashing Live Mail. I also have this problem with Live Mail. Also, sometimes Live Mail screen breaks down into horizontal colored lines. I wonder if my Live Mail and desktop display issues are related and caused by a failing integrated gpu?

                                       **********************************
There are several ways to find what the problem is. The best is to go into event viewer (type eventvwr in search). Event viewer (local) and look for errors listed in the last day, week, etc. Then go to the windows log>application tab. Finally the windows Logs>system tabs.

You want to look for all errors (they have red in the left column ).

When you find them you want to look for errors that say app hang, app crash, or anything that relates to WLM

When you find them please note the event ID, and the source codes and tell us what they are.

                                    ***************************************

[artbuc]

Hopefully this is not a premature post, but it looks like my new video card solved my problems. Looks like either my on-board graphics was going bad or there was some conflict between on-board graphics and Win 7. Not sure about the latter because the Win 7 upgrade wizard said it should work fine. The quality of my monitor picture is not noticeably better with DVI vs on-board VGA, but I see a major improvement in how fast screens load, especially Yahoo and Yahoo news stories and Live Mail. I thought the slow Yahoo page loads was due to inadequate RAM, but maybe not. I will be increasing RAM from 1 to 3GB. Will be interesting to see if it provides any noticeable improvement.